bschooled / move-frompurges.ps1

The intention of this script is to provide a means to mass recover e-mails from an Exchange or O365 environment that have been moved to Recoverable Items/Purges. At the moment it only supports Email messages

Move-FromPurges.ps1

The purpose of this script is to be able to recover items from the hidden Purges subfolder in situations where a Retention policy or other process has moved large amounts of emails to it. The script can recover Emails, Notes, Tasks, and Calendar items.

Updates

• Notes, Tasks, and Calendar items can now be recovered, and will go to their respective folders: Check the parameters below

Future Plans

• Create a working GUI via the Launch GUI shell
• Allow user to determine recovery paths
• Simplify Dependencies

Requirements:

Without the following below, the script cannot run, there are no alternatives.

1. You need the EWS Managed API located here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42951

2. You need to install PowershellGet (OneGet) if you are running on Powershell Version older than 5 (the script does not need to be run from a server, recommended run it from Windows 10 as that is what it was tested on): https://github.com/OneGet/oneget

3. From an Elevated (Admin) powershell window: a. Install-Module PoshRsJob

4. You need an EWS Impersonation Account, this account is a normal user, no mailbox required that is given special priveleges to impersonate users via EWS to do the work in the script. Instructions below: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn722376(v=exchg.150).aspx

Steps for Purge Recovery Script:

1. You need an export of the Primary SMTP address of the users you want to recover, this can be in a variable or txt file (no headers) Ex:
   Get-Mailbox | select -ExpandProperty PrimarySmtpAddress | Out-File C:\Move-FromPurges.ps1\export-users.txt
   $mbs = Get-content C:\Move-FromPurges.ps1\export-users.txt

2. Before running the script import the list into a variable so we can use it to check all mailboxes.

3. The script has many parameters, some required:
   a. Required: -Mailboxes $variable <- This command is your imported data of SMTP addresses for users to recover
   b. Required: -AccountWithImpersonationRights “[email protected]” <- Your EWS impersonation account configured in prereqs
   c. Required: -StartDate “01-01-2015” <-The beginning date you want emails recovered from (specifying a large range will significantly increase completion time)
   d. Required: -EndDate “09-14-2017” <- The end date for the range you want emails recover from (specifying a large range will significantly increase completion time)
   e. Optional: -subfolder “Name” <- By default all messages are recovered to inbox, you can specify a subfolder to recover messages to under the Inbox, it will create it if it does not exist
   f. Optional: -whatif <-Runs the code but does not actually move any items, it will log what it would do
   g. Optional: -PageLimit 500 <- EWS can only return up to 1000 items at a time, the default in the script is 100. Specifying a higher value than 1000 will have no effect.
   h. Optional: -logpath “FolderPath” <- Specify a log path to store logs in, default is to store in the directory running script from. Just specify the folder.
   i. Optional: -threadlimit 5 <- The maximum number of purge recover jobs to run at once. Specifying too high a number may cause throttling or even crash the script, 5 jobs at once is the default, don’t suggest going higher than 10
   j. Optional: -recoverTasks <- Switch Parameter. Will recover tasks to the tasks folder note: date filtering does not work
   k. Optional: -recoverNotes <- Switch Parameter. Will recover notes to the notes folder note: date filtering does not work
   l. Optional: -recoverCalendar <- Switch Parameter. Will recover Calendar items to the Calendar folder
   m. Optional: -recoverAll <- Switch Parameter. Will recover all items, email items go recovery or inbox, all other items go to their respective

4. Examples
   a. .\Move-FromPurges.ps1 -Mailboxes $mbs -subfolder "Recovery" -AccountWithImpersonationRights "[email protected]" -startdate 01-01-2017 -enddate 09-14-2017 -whatif <-- Does a dry run, view log to see what it would
   b .\Move-FromPurges.ps1 -Mailboxes $mbs -subfolder Recovery -AccountWithImpersonationRights "[email protected]" -startdate 11-6-2016 -enddate 11-7-2017 -recoverTasks -recoverNotes -recoverCalendar <--Recovers tasks, notes, and calendar items

move-frompurges.ps1's Issues

StartDate / EndDate Conflict

I had a scenario where I set the startdate to 12-01-2017 and the enddate was set to 02-13-2018. I got the error message;

You cannot specify a Start Date that is after your End Date: Please Run Again

Resetting the startdate to 01-01-2017 and leaving the enddate set to 02-13-2018 works. I think it may have something to do with using 12 in the startdate and 02 in the enddate.